Does anyone remember the Motorola XOOM? It was the world’s first Android Honeycomb tablet, announced and shipped in Q1 of this year. It was so frighteningly bad that we wouldn’t even recommend it to our worst enemies. Part of that is due to Motorola, who made the XOOM expensive, thick, heavy, and out of materials you’d normally see in the used toy section at your local Salvation Army. Most of the blame for the product’s failure however is due to Google. The first version Honeycomb was so dreadful that it was difficult to see how Google had the courage to release it out into the wild. Honeycomb 3.1 fixed things a little bit, but not by much. Oddly enough Google showed off the next version of Android, dubbed Ice Cream Sandwich, at an event last month, yet they completely neglected to talk about the tablet portion of the user interface. That’s not exactly an encouraging sign when it comes to showing the market that they can produce a competent solution to the iPad.
Anyway, since the XOOM we’ve seen many Android tablets hit the market, the most gorgeous of which being the Galaxy Tab series by Samsung. Pretty as they might be, they still have a problem … they run Google’s obviously unfinished software. So what’s Motorola’s response? Yesterday a flyer from Carphone Warehouse, a retailer of consumer electronics gear in Europe, hit the internet showing the successor to the Motorola XOOM, aptly called the XOOM 2, and it looks far better than the original, but it’s shipping with Honeycomb 3.2 instead of Ice Cream Sandwich. The panel is also smaller, 8.2 inches versus 10.1 inches, which makes it slightly more portable, but other than that there’s really nothing that makes it stand out.
Now if we’re sounding a bit pessimistic then cheer up. Word on the street is that 2012 will be all about ultra high resolution quad core tablets. Apple will likely announce the next iPad in the first half of 2012 and Google has penciled in the 24th and 25th of April for their annual I/O event.
Can you say Jelly Bean?